Special Edition: Final Post

For our final exam, we were told to go into the SXU art gallery and post about what was in there, why we enjoyed or did not enjoy the displays, what they were made up of and why they were created. To start off, I walked in and saw all of these drawings. I found them all to be absolutely beautiful and very detailed. The artist is Lindsay Surin and she created all of these portraits using a pencil, or to be more specific, "fine pencil drawing". These portraits are absolutely incredible, you can tell she is passionate about her work by the amount of time and effort she put towards these drawings. I found the top left to be very interesting because it reminds me of a ballerina or a dancer preparing for a show. The expression on her face is very peaceful and you can see in her shorts, t-shirt, and hair the amount of detail that Lindsay went into. On the left hand side there is a photo of what I would like to think is another dancer (next to the large portrait in the top right there is 2 people, I believe these are the two dancers shown above). This large portrait is also drawn by a fine pencil and has incredible detail. You can see the muscles on her arms, legs and back very clearly, proving that the artist is trying to show us this girl is in shape. The other two portraits caught my eye but were not as large and the first two so I felt as if the artist wanted the two large ones to be the main attraction. I did notice they too were drawn with fine pencil. They both give me the feeling of depression/frustration. It seems in the bottom corner the woman is looking out some sort of window, thinking about something and in the furthest one it seems like this person is stressed out or frustrated about something. The artist did an incredible job with these two drawings because she went into such fine detail that her art is literally giving the viewer feelings. I could feel the sense of despair while looking at the far left portrait. 

The drawings shown above are the ones that really caught my eye. On the top right side it seems to me like the two girls are having problems with one another or they are angry with each other. And then on the bottom it seems that they have made up. These too have been drawn with fine pencil and the detail for both girls is incredible. You can tell my their facial expressions and their body language in the top photo that they are not being friendly with one another and the fact that the artist was able to show us that through just her pencil drawing is crazy. The one on the bottom, also drawn with pencil seems like the two of them have either made up or it is just trying to show that these two are friends. I noticed they have different outfits on so I am unsure if they are the same girls, but their hair looks very similar so I made the assumption that they are. Also the detail on the arms look almost identical to the picture above it. This portrait gave me the sense of comfort and forgiveness. Lastly on the left is a portrait drawn with fine pencil. I enjoy this picture again because of the insane detail but also because it gave me a sense of unity. This picture made me feel like the artist was trying to make a statement about coming together as one which I found to be extremely inspiring. The all of her hard work truly shows through the detail she went into for each and every portrait she drew.

These pictures above were located on the left side of the gallery and because Lindsay had left, I was unable to ask if she was the one who created them. I assumed she was simply because she was the only artist present when I first arrived and her card was the only one available. I thought all of these pictures were very interesting but I personally enjoy seeing art work that is literally made by the artist. So I thought that compared to the portraits above, these did not do as much justice. They were very bight and vibrant and made the room light up but they weren't as interesting for me to look at just because I failed to literally SEE the hard work of the artist whereas above, you can tell how hard she worked with each and every stroke. The one on the bottom was my favorite because of the explosion of color and the curiosity of what is lying underneath to give it such a wonderful color. I truly think these pictures are brilliant but as a visitor in the gallery, the fine pencil drawings really caught my eye the most. Overall, the gallery was stunning and I think it consisted of some of the best artwork I have ever seen. The artist showed emotion and detail with every piece and I thought that was brilliant.

Week 14- Publish and Final Steps

To finalize my cards, box and box cover, we needed to upload each card from In Design as a JPEG and upload each front of the card on it's own. To do this, I selected 18 cards because that is how many children's cards I had. I then chose my 18 cards and exported them as JPEGs. Next I uploaded them onto the website one by one and dragged them into each box. Because I have the same back for each card, I only needed to upload this card once. Once I did that my cards were good to go. The front of each one was different and the backs were all the same. I then had to upload each adult card with their backgrounds. To do this I repeated the above steps using 18 cards again. I then uploaded the back of the adult card so that I could differ one from the other. I added both sets of card to my cart and then moved onto my game board. I uploaded my game board onto the website, rearranged it because I wanted everything to be centered and saved this board and added it into my cart. Last but not least I had to upload my game board box. I had some trouble doing this because I had lost my game board box on the desktop for some reason, so I needed Nathan's help to try and get my box transferred as a JPEG so I could upload it and get it sent to SXU. He finally found a way to export my box as a JEPG so we were able to send my order. I then paid for the order and printed my receipt, my box should be arriving the week of finals week.

Week 13- Revisions For Cards

After working on all 36 cards, I had to go through all of them and double check to see if they looked the way I wanted. After going through all of my cards that were created on Adobe Illustrator, I then realized that  I have 18 cards for kids and 18 cards for adults so I need to create a background for the 18 kids cards. I thought that incorporating the leprechaun in some way would be a good background for the kids cards because usually young kids are the ones who believe in leprechauns. I also thought that the black form the pot of gold would create huge contrast making the title really pop out. But before placing the pot of gold and leprechaun into place, I had to decide on a background color. The kids cards really had to differ from the adult cards so I was looking for a single colored background but making it unique.  I decided on making the background for the leprechaun a green gradient design fading into the center. I felt that this really made the leprechaun and pot of gold pop. The leprechaun's green hat is not blending together with the green background due to the gradient and since the middle fades to white, the black stands out even more. I went onto Adobe Illustrator and locked all of the colors/lines that were blocking off he leprechaun and the pot of gold. I then copied the image and exported it as a JPEG into In Design. After placing it into In Design, I then resized the image so that it would fit nicely in the middle of the page. Next I copied the text from the back of the adult cards and pasted it onto the pot o gold. I wanted to be sure the fonts were the same because it would make the game look more professionally put together.  I then went through all of my cards for the final time to make sure that they had no spelling errors and were ready to send out to get printed. Above are examples of all 4 of my card types and the the two backs of each card.

Week 12- Current State of Cards

For my cards, I used indesign to create them. For all of my writing, I had made master pages of 4 separate pages, each with a name. I used the typing tool to do this. For each image I have, I had to open up adobe Illustrator, save each image as a JPEG and upload them onto in design separately. I then decided which image I wanted for each card. I then uploaded them onto the master pages so that it would show up on each page. Next I went into Microsoft Word and created my questions, challenges, and statements keeping in mind that I need to make 18 for children and 18 for adults. I did this to double check my spelling and grammar. Next, I created a text box to paste these into. Lastly, I decided to create the back of the card in a way that shows its an Irish themed game but also makes the name of the game pop, so that is when I decided to create an entire card on Illustrator and create the Irish flag with shamrocks. I then put one large green shamrock on the front and my name of my game inside of that in the same font that I used throughout my cards. I have finished all of my cards but am open to any opinions and recommendations to make them even better!

Week 11- Cards

The objective for this week was to get familiar with In Design and create 4 cards we thought we wanted to make. Because this was my first time working with In Design on my own, I decided not to change any of the things that we worked on in class. I left each card the color I chose in class. We did this by making a box around the entire card and picking the color of our choosing. I chose these colors because they were bright and I knew putting text on them would make them easy to read. We then learned how to export photos from Adobe Illustrator to In Design. I chose my rainbow and my shamrock because both of these represent my game very well. I exported these photos as JPEG and placed them onto my cards. I was unsure as to what I wanted as my image for the CHALLENGE card and WILD CARD, so I did not place anything onto them yet. We were required to put text onto our cards so I came up with some questions. My game has both adult and kid cards so for my first few cards I wanted to mix it up and do 2 adult cards and 2 kids cards. I know I want to change the background colors on most of the cards so that my images will pop and be pleasant to look at. I also need to create some images to place onto my last two cards. I know I want to keep my font for the labels of my cards because I have used this font throughout my whole game. However, I think I may want to adjust the font of the questions/statements that my cards have on them.

Week 10- Final Game Board Box

After hearing what my classmates thought I should improve on and what I should keep the same, I found that my font was the main thing everyone commented on, to make it bigger, bolder, and to match the font that I used in the game. To do this, I used adobe illustrator and deleted all of the current text that I had already used. I then changed my font to Marker Felt, and started typing what I needed to be on there. I then sized it using 42pt font. After doing this, I stretched out the title a bit to make it more noticeable. I then copied the title as it was and pasted it onto every corner of the gambol to make sure each side had the same sizing for the title. Next I started typing the number of players, the age intended, where it was made and who it was made by. to do this I still used marker felt font, but I did not want to use the same sizing because I wanted the title to stick out the most. The next thing my classmates said to do was to make the bottom on my box more interesting. I decided that I was going to incorporate the Irish flag into it but instead of just making the bottom an Irish flag, I wanted to switch it up a bit. I decided to make the flag out of shamrocks because my game is an Irish theme and it would add taste to the box. To do this, I copied the shamrock that I made previously for my title and stretched it out so that it would fit nicely onto the bottom page. I then copied the size I liked and laid them out throughout the whole page. I then changed the color of the 3 middle rows to white and the last 2 rows to orange by using the eyedropper tool. After making each color perfect, I finally had finished my game board and was very happy with the outcome.

Week 9- Critical Analysis of Game Board

After receiving my critique on my game board, there were many things that people said that they liked such as the leprechaun hiding because usually people have to search for leprechauns.The next thing someone commented on was the color scheme; they said that it was working because it contrasted the illustrations so well.  Another thing they said they liked was that there was a pot of gold and a rainbow because usually in typical Irish stories, you have to go to the end of the rainbow to find the pot of gold. They said that it was very tied together but there were a few things that I could work on. The number one thing people commented on was the font- I need to make it more big and bold so that the title stand out more. The next thing that they commented on was making sure that when I do change the font, I make it the same size all around instead of stretching it and moving it like I did in the top left and right hand corners. What I plan to do to fix my game board and make it better is change the font, maybe try and fix up a few of the illustrations, making them bigger or smaller depending on where I want to put the title. Lastly, I am going to edit the bottom of my box and add some illustrations that also tie into my theme so that the entire game fits as a whole.

Week 9- Box Cover

When designing my game box cover, I looked at multiple box covers comparing and contrasting each one to decide what I think would work well for my specific box and what I would not want to use for my box. I truly can say I did not know what I wanted to design my box around until I started working looking at both the box covers and my own personal game. After looking at all of the boxes I decided that I wanted to incorporate my name into my illustrations, but also be sure that my name was very clear. I decided this because I felt that every game that had a clear name but was also surrounded by other things that represent the game made it such as Cranium, War of Terror and LIFE. To create my box I had to copy the box cover cut out and open it in adobe illustrator. Next I started to design my box. I knew I wanted to incorporate the leprechaun because it is the main thing on my board that represents the Irish theme. I then started creating a rainbow with a pot of gold at the end because that is the main point of my game, to be the first to get tot the pot of gold. I did this by making a U shape on adobe illustrator using the pen tool. I then created each layer under that doing the same thing but with smaller margins. I used the fill and decided the color about each level of the rainbow. I next wanted to draw a cloud underneath the rainbow to put the name of the game in. I did this by making small U shapes and making the cloud long and skinny.  I filled it in white and used a blue outline to emphasize that it was a cloud. FInally I added the name of the game onto each side of the box. I thought it could use a little more of an Irish theme so I traced a shamrock and shrunk it to fit on each side of the name of the game.

Week 8- Gameboard pieces

For my game board pieces, I chose to stick with the same piece with different cut outs in between so that each player can tell the difference between one another. I decided to do horseshoes because my game is a fictional Irish theme and with many fictional things relating to Ireland, horseshoes are very common to see. I do not have any of these in my game so I decided that adding them as pieces would be a great compliment to the game. I made these pieces by fist taking a picture of a real horseshoe that I liked the shape of, and tracing it by using the pen tool. I then copied the finished horseshoe and repeated it 3 more times. After doing this, I had to decide how I wanted to show that each piece was different. I saw a lot of horseshoes with lines, circles, or even letters cut out of them, so that made me decide to make each piece unique by making the cut outs different. For the first one I just stuck with regular circles because this is what I saw on most horseshoes. I then decided to get creative and I took a picture of a shamrock and a leprechaun hat and I traced them both using the pen tool, then shrunk them to size so that they would fit into the horseshoe comfortably. The last cutout I made was the star cut out. I used this cut out because stars are also used frequently when addressing fictional Irish themes. Lastly, I made a base for each horseshoe so that they can stand upright on my finished game board.

Week 7- Final Gameboard

This is my final copy of my game board. I first started by changing the colors of the spaces from gradient to a normal light green because it contrasts the shamrocks and gold coins very well. Next I deleted many of my spaces to make more room for the graphics that I had in mind. I used the ellipse tool to create the golden coins and used the pen tool to create the pot of gold. I then used a photo of a leprechaun to trace a hat. I colored that green and places a buckle on top. At first I didn't even have the leprechaun in there because tracing a human leprechaun wasn't working out in my favor, so after multiple failures I decided to try and create one myself with the pen tool. I did this by first creating the face and adding the orange hair using the pen tool, I then made one eye and just copy and pasted it to create the other. I created the Irish flag by making a rectangle and separating it up into 3 pieces, then colored each spot using the eyedropper tool. Lastly, I took Nathan's advice and created my rainbow so that it can be part of the game. When someone lands on a shamrock or gold coin, they chose a card and within those cards there will be directions telling the people playing to either ride a certain color forward or ride it all the way back to square 10. This game was very interesting but very challenging for me to make, however I am very happy with my final product.

Week 6- Gameboard Second Draft

In this game board I started to add color. I used a green gradient fill for my spaces because I decided I wanted to make my game board an Irish theme. I then used just a regular color fill for the spaces that I wanted to put the shamrocks on. For the shamrocks, I used the pencil tool to draw them. This took me a while because using the pencil tool on the computer can be very challenging because you are using a mouse, not your hands. I should have elaborated more on my theme because it is not truly clear what I was trying to go for which is why I decided to make some changes in my final copy.

Week 4-Gameboard First Draft

This is my first draft of the game board that we were creating in class. This is a very plain colored piece because this is when we were first learning how to create the spaces on the game board, repeat the spaces and add numbers. At first we needed to create 63 spaces so it was difficult to make room for so many spaces and make it look halfway decent, but I tried to do a traditional board game type where the spaces move slowly inward to the finish line. Learning this was a little bit difficult because it was something new, which is why there is no color. Overall this project became easier as you got the hang of it

Week 5- Goose

This is the goose that we worked on in class Monday and Wednesday. Although this was a challenging item to make, I actually started to get the hang of how to trace items! I did not know how to use the pen tool to make edges and curves before and now I can very easily trace small indents. To color each section you would have to split each shape into layers which was challenging but after you got the hang of it, it started working out very easily. I think from here on out tracing real life objects will be something that comes as second nature and hopefully I can expand on my knowledge on this and make things look even more realistic!

Midterm

While visiting the art exhibit made by Edyta Stepien, I thought it was extraordinary. Edyta had 3 pieces of art, all from film, and all moving pieces. The main piece was called "Nonphenomena" which was a video that played on 2 full walls. While watching this my first thoughts were that it was a very dark looking video which looked like some sort of storm or the inside of a tornado of some type. There were a lot of items that were visible to the naked eye such as tumbleweed, branches, twigs, newspaper, ect. This piece was very confusing to me at first because I did not truly understand it, although I did think it was beautiful. The video gave me sort of a sad, lonely type feeling because it was very dark and the pace would go from extremely chaotic to very calm, which also  confused me.

 Next there were two pieces that were constantly moving. There were many natural colors included in both of them, a lot of green, tan, brown and grey. The grey threw me off in both pieces and actually made me very confused. The first piece was a moving circular shaped piece that was very peaceful and calming, when I was looking at this piece I thought the artist was trying to show us sort of a re-form type of art.

The next piece was similar in color and movement with the prior circular one, but it was sort of in the shape of a tree/leaf. This one seemed to be more green to me than the other one, it would stay green for a while and then as it would move, the color would start getting lighter and even reach a white color. This piece was also very peaceful to look at.

At the end of the show, we got to ask the artist multiple questions on how she created it, what she was going for, why she made what she made and what it means. Edyta made "Nonphenomena" in an aquarium and used a macrolens camera and constructed material to try and make a natural looking storm. Edyta came up with this idea around 2010 because of all of the hurricanes and earthquakes that were going on and she wanted to use this art to show how humans impact nature. To do this, she used many different things in the video to show human impact- such as newspaper. She told us that she was trying to make us feel what is happening on screen because she has always wanted to identify nature for herself and use a natural aspect with her art. Edyta did run into a few problems such as finding the equipment necessary and the space to show her artwork. She used many different things to try and create these storms such as, hairdryers, her hands, 7 projectors, mirrors, glitter, sticks, dirt, paper, sand. This took her a total of 3 weeks to complete, including editing. This was all shot in real time and she did not want to collaborating it because she thought it would feel different if she did. As for the other two, she did not speak much about them but she did say that she tried to stick with the same meaning- how humans effect nature. This is why she included greys and other colors into these natural looking pieces because they represent concrete and human effects.